Corporate Social Responsibility

The Environment

How we work
Curtins are committed to work in an efficient and environmentally sensitive manner. We are committed to the continual development and improvement of our policy and systems and are working towards ISO 14001 accreditation over the next 18 months. The first stage of this initiative was to formalise our environmental action plan and trial it in our Manchester office in 2007. We are now implementing these procedures across all our offices.

The work we do
We embrace and support the principles of sustainability wherever we can in the projects on which we work, and have done so for many years.

We were engineers for Powergen’s HQ building in Coventry; constructed in 1995 and which was the first substantially naturally ventilated large scale modern office building constructed in the UK.

We have contributed in a similar way to many other projects since; “Building 33” at the Central Vetinary Laboratory in Weighbridge for DEFRA which achieved an “Excellent” BREEAM environmental assessment award in 2005 being just one recent example.

Sharing best practice with our peers across the industry is crucial for the benefit of society as a whole, we embrace this and are represented on the Institution of Structural Engineers Sustainable Construction Panel.

The Community

Commercial organizations have the opportunity and ability to support and promote community engagement and charitable giving.

Charitable Support
A small sample of charity activity has recently included:

• A sponsored Dragon Boat racing day in support of Claire House Children’s Hospice on Merseyside in July 2007.
• Encouragement of staff through sponsorship to participate in the Liverpool Corporate Cup 5k run in aid of multiple charities in September 2007.
• Encouragement of staff through sponsorship to participate in the Liverpool “Santa Dash” 2k race in aid of multiple charities.

Young People Development
Curtins maintain a long standing tradition of engagement with local schools, participating in careers events to inform school pupils of career opportunities within the industry and providing work place experience opportunities.

We have recently extended this to overseas communities. In 2007 we provided work experience to a student from Riga, Latvia through the IAESTE programme run by the British Council and plan to develop this support to a greater number of students from other parts of the world to enable both the participants in the scheme and our own staff to learn about and share different cultural experiences.